Review of The Glass Menagerie at the Devonshire Park Theatre by Laura Sonier.
SET in St Louis in the Depression of the 30s, The Glass Menagerie is the most autobiographical of Tennessee Williams' plays.
He has drawn on his experience of having a mentally fragile sister and an overbearing mother to pen a play of memory and ill
usion, dreams and fantasies set against the harsh realities of pre-war America.
Brenda Blethyn gives a superbly layered, emotive performance as Amanda, the pushy matriach of the Wingfield family, delivering the heart-breaking humanity behind the overbearing exterior.
She is not just a faded belle, trading on past glories and trying to live vicariously through her painfully shy daughter, but a woman beaten down by the rigours of life and desperately trying to do the best, as she sees it, for her children.
She believed she would be living a life of comfort and gentility but, after being abandoned by her husband, she is reduced to a small apartment, the financial support of her son, Tom (Mark Arends) and looking after her mentally fragile daughter Laura (Emma Hamilton).
The protagonists are both nurtured and stifled by their fantasy lives – Tom, who 'flicks' lights on and off with his fingers, conjures up music and loses himself in poetry, while spending his days in a job he loathes, Amanda is literally bathed in a rose-tinted glow as she reminisces about her 37 gentleman callers in one day and Laura loses herself in nurturing her eponymous menagerie of small glass animals, which are as fragile and luminous as she is.
The gentleman caller (Andrew Langtree), who although possesses the grounded robustness so sorely lacking in the Wingfield family, also trades on past glories – keeping Tom close as the keeper of the flame of his teenage triumphs.
He is at first oblivious to the weight of expectations he shoulders, but provides a catalyst, of sorts, which changes the family dynamic.
The production, which is heading to the West End, oozes class with fantastic performances from all four actors.
If there are tickets left for the Friday (7.45pm) and Saturday performances (2.30pm and 7.45pm), snap them up.
Call 412000.
The full article contains 373 words and appears in n/a newspaper.
